


only the stars can see us

by RainShadow07



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-29 02:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12072954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainShadow07/pseuds/RainShadow07
Summary: Jack left. He left them and Gwen may never get her chance with him. Ianto wants to be selfish and keep that part of Jack to himself. But can he really blame her for wanting Jack, too? Post Season 1





	only the stars can see us

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'ed, unfinished. Written in 2008. Spoilers for 1x13, het, some kinkiness in the next bit.

_Sleeping with ghosts_  
_It's such a lonely experience_  
_The stars are out tonight_  
_Only they can hear you breathing_  
-So Like a Rose by Garbage

 

Ianto Jones, recently promoted from tea boy to proper-Torchwood-team-member-and-tea-boy, looked at the conference table and sighed. Half-empty cans of cola, crumpled napkins, grease-stained paper plates, and destroyed pizza boxes littered its surface. He squared his shoulders, pinched open the plastic trash bag, and approached his quarry warily. He began to gather up the remnants of the team’s dinner when a strange kind of homesickness assaulted him. Homesickness, not for a place, but for a person. A man. Ianto gripped the table, letting the bag fall to the floor.

His vision blurred, but not from lack of oxygen. Tears gathered on the fringes of his eyes, paused, then were blinked away. A noise, scrape of shoe on carpet, and Gwen was there, hovering in the doorway. Ianto didn’t look at her. “Oughtn’t you be at home?” he asked quietly. Gwen moved into the room, picked up the trash bag. She grabbed the colorful “Jubilee!” pizza box and tilted it in.

“It’s odd,” she said after a moment. “I’ve been spending more time at home with Rhys, and yet I’m still…” she trailed off, shaking her head.

“Lonely?” Ianto finished.

Gwen’s lips twisted into a ghost of a smile. “Silly, isn’t it?”

“No.” Ianto said.

They worked in silence, clearing off the rubble until the table was once again visible. Ianto knotted the bag, then dropped it in a chair. He turned expectantly toward Gwen, his posture clearly indicating that he expected her to go. Instead, Gwen moved closer to him.

“Ianto? Are you going to be okay?” she asked, putting a hand on his arm and looking up into his eyes earnestly. Ianto began to brush her off with his usual polished neutrality, when he caught something in her eyes. An echo of the homesickness he was feeling. An answering howl in the darkness. And then, Ianto looked at Gwen Cooper, really looked at her, and felt something click into place. Understood why Jack wanted her so badly; Gwen just went on caring and caring, no matter how badly she got hurt.

“God, how do you do it?” he exclaimed without thinking, and Gwen flinched at the raw, unleashed emotion in his voice. She looked at him, brow furrowed in concern, opened her mouth to speak, but was silent.

She turned away from him. “I don’t know,” she said crisply. “I don’t see any other alternative.”

“How can you?” Ianto asked her, voice still broken. “How can you do it, stand the hurt, over and again, and still care?”

She whirled on him, suddenly angry. “What else am I supposed to do?” she cried, throwing her hands into the air. “Tell me! I can’t shut it off, I don’t know how, how to be _numb_...” Her fists came down to press on his chest, not hard enough to hurt, just pressing. Pushing. She pressed her face into his suit, his nicely pressed jacket, and it didn’t really matter, did it? Her shoulders shook, and Ianto put his arms around her, stroked her hair and made soft shushing noises as Gwen cried out a wet patch onto his shirt and tie.

“It doesn’t really work, being numb,” he mumbled, half to himself. “It all comes back eventually. In the meantime we all pretend it’s okay, that nothing has changed, there’s nothing different… but there is. And the pretending, it hurts even more.”

Gwen pulled back slightly, fingertips brushing over his cheek, his ear. “God, Ianto-” she said, voice full of incredible sadness.

“Don’t” he said sharply, his accent thickening in response to hers. That happened, sometimes, when the two of them talked together. Jack would have loved to hear it…

“I’m sorry,” she said, then paused, noticing her accent. She blinked up at him, and Ianto watched her go through the same thought process. “It’s been almost two months,” she said, mouth twisting.

Ianto nodded. “Seven weeks, three days,” _four hours_ and he could look at the stopwatch to know to the last second, but he didn’t.

“Do you think he’ll come back?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know,” he replied just as quietly. He sighed. “I want him to.”

Gwen nodded, bit her lip. “Me too.”

Ianto scrubbed at his face, his eyes, tired. He stretched his arms and swallowed a yawn, his eyes scrunched closed momentarily, and so was unprepared for Gwen’s question.

“You’ve been staying here, haven’t you? At night?”

He tensed, opened his eyes. Considered being defensive, or lying. Then he recognized that look on her face, that _need_ to be connected to Jack, had seen it in the mirror hundreds of times since…

Well. Since.

“Come on. I’ll show you his room.”

\---------------

Ianto led Gwen into Jack’s office, then down the ladder and into the room that Jack had used, that Ianto had been using. Gwen stilled, looking around the tiny room, at the bed, the closet, the nightstand, the door that led into the small bathroom.

“It smells like…” _him_ , Ianto knew. Jack. He opened the sliding closet door, and she stepped closer, buried her face into the clothes hanging there, and breathed deeply, tears pricking her eyes. Ianto gave her some space, grabbing an empty a hanger, then removing his jacket and putting it on the hanger. He hung his jacket in the closet. Beside him, Gwen laughed, the sound muffled by the clothes she was pressing her face into. “Can’t believe I’m bloody crying again,” she said, voice half-hysterical.

“It’s all right, Gwen,” he said, because it was. He brushed his hand down the fabric of one of Jack’s shirts. She turned, her face streaked with tears, and walked to the foot of the bed.

“What is it like?” she asked, shoulders tensed, not looking at him. “Being with him.”

Ianto paused, surprised at the bluntness of the question. Then again, he didn’t blame her for being curious. “It’s… it was like breathing underwater. Forgetting your own name-“ at this, she cast him a look, and he smiled. “Not quite what I meant. It’s good, it’s bloody fantastic- of course it is, it’s Jack. But what I mean is…” he hesitated, trying to find the right words. “You know, sometimes, they way he’d look at you, or me? Like he knew everything about you, every last hope and secret and dark place, not only knew it, but saw it and _loved you anyway?_ ”

Gwen shivered, and nodded. While he was talking, Ianto had walked over to be near her, and her body had twisted towards his, and she gripped his arm. His skin was hot under her hand, and he could feel her nails digging into him. His face was flushed with memory. “Imagine that look focused on you for more than just a few seconds. Minutes, an hour. An eternity.”

She looked up at him, eyes not seeing anything but Jack. “It’s like, in that moment, you’re the only person in the room, alone even when surrounded by people, as if you’re the most important thing in the whole entire world.”

Ianto nodded, eyes shut, drawn in by her words, her shared knowledge, his hands resting on her shoulders.

“Ianto?” she whispered. He opened his eyes, saw how close they were, one of her hands still clutching his arm, the other fisted in the material of his shirt, dragging him closer. His breathing hitched without his permission, suddenly so aware of her, the smell of her shampoo, the desperation in her grip. “What if I never get the chance..? Ianto, I want to know, I want to know what it’s like to be with him, please,” she trembled, swaying slightly, “please, will you show me?”

Ianto blinked, very surprised, but already his mind was tumbling with images, seeing it, his body responding. Take Gwen, the way Jack had taken him? The thought sent a sudden, sharp lance of desire through him. Remembering the heat of it, his body pressed up against Jack’s, imagined Gwen and Jack together, her soft skin, curve of her neck, shape of her lips; Jack, hard and relentless or slow and deep, Jack, pressing up behind him in the Hub, fucking on the floor of his office because they couldn’t make it to his room…

And Gwen. Sweet, good Gwen, who loved Jack but had never gotten the chance, may never get the chance. Jack, who Ianto knew loved Gwen as surely as he knew his own name. Part of him wanted to be selfish, wanted to keep those memories, wanted to keep Jack. But it was Gwen, who was shivering under his gaze, needing so desperately for someone to break her apart and hold the pieces for awhile- just like Jack had done for him- and that clinched it.

He lifted his hand to Gwen’s face. Her eyes were dark with tears and something else, something that curled in him and made him warm in a way he hadn’t felt since Jack had disappeared in an unearthly breeze.

 

TBC


End file.
